Rating: 
Summary: Simple and Effective
Review: Excellent book. Ihad been playing for about 2 years when i purchased this book and I love it. You'll quickly learn several different patterns of fingerpicking while learning to play in different styles of music. And as it is the with the guitar and this book, Its pretty easy to sound OK but pretty hard to sound great.
Rating:
Summary: Simple and Effective
Review: Excellent book. Ihad been playing for about 2 years when i purchased this book and I love it. You'll quickly learn several different patterns of fingerpicking while learning to play in different styles of music. And as it is the with the guitar and this book, Its pretty easy to sound OK but pretty hard to sound great.
Rating:
Summary: Top Drawer Instruction
Review: I went a little crazy after inheriting a Guild guitar from a family member and purchased 10 guitar instruction books from Amazon. "Fingerstyle Guitar" is by far and away the best. It will teach you to turn simple chord progressions into beautiful and "artful" sound. I recently jammed with some colleagues of mine, all of who have been playing for years, and totally blew them away. They all insisted that I was lying to them about only having played for months!! The reviewer who (in a quasi-positive way) said that he learned all of the songs in about an hour is lying through his teeth, unless he's the next Jimmy Hendrix or something! Also, you WILL sound professional if you play the songs correctly. It's analogous to an actor reading lines... if you have zero talent you may only sound good, not "great". Also, Marc Hanson encourages you add your own notes to personalize each song and give it your own style.
When I first received the book I listened to the entire CD and thought that it would take forever and involve a great deal of work to learn these songs. The instruction is so straightforward that you'll easily learn a song in a given evening. I hope Marc Hanson writes a follow up book with even more advanced techniques!
Rating:
Summary: Top Drawer Instruction
Review: I went a little crazy after inheriting a Guild guitar from a family member and purchased 10 guitar instruction books from Amazon. "Fingerstyle Guitar" is by far and away the best. It will teach you to turn simple chord progressions into beautiful and "artful" sound. I recently jammed with some colleagues of mine, all of who have been playing for years, and totally blew them away. They all insisted that I was lying to them about only having played for months!! The reviewer who (in a quasi-positive way) said that he learned all of the songs in about an hour is lying through his teeth, unless he's the next Jimmy Hendrix or something! Also, you WILL sound professional if you play the songs correctly. It's analogous to an actor reading lines... if you have zero talent you may only sound good, not "great". Also, Marc Hanson encourages you add your own notes to personalize each song and give it your own style.
When I first received the book I listened to the entire CD and thought that it would take forever and involve a great deal of work to learn these songs. The instruction is so straightforward that you'll easily learn a song in a given evening. I hope Marc Hanson writes a follow up book with even more advanced techniques!
Rating:
Summary: Top Drawer Instruction
Review: I went a little crazy after inheriting a Guild guitar from a family member and purchased 10 guitar instruction books from Amazon. "Fingerstyle Guitar" is by far and away the best. It will teach you to turn simple chord progressions into beautiful and "artful" sound. I recently jammed with some colleagues of mine, all of who have been playing for years, and totally blew them away. They all insisted that I was lying to them about only having played for months!! The reviewer who (in a quasi-positive way) said that he learned all of the songs in about an hour is lying through his teeth, unless he's the next Jimmy Hendrix or something! Also, you WILL sound professional if you play the songs correctly. It's analogous to an actor reading lines... if you have zero talent you may only sound good, not "great". Also, Marc Hanson encourages you add your own notes to personalize each song and give it your own style.
When I first received the book I listened to the entire CD and thought that it would take forever and involve a great deal of work to learn these songs. The instruction is so straightforward that you'll easily learn a song in a given evening. I hope Marc Hanson writes a follow up book with even more advanced techniques!
Rating:
Summary: Be careful of the level...
Review: Let me be clear; this book is very good, but I made a mistake. I read the reviews here and took it that the peices would be harder than they are. If you have basic finger separation and the ability to play two and three note thumb patterns you may easily be able to play, and remember, everything in this book in a bit over an hour. It is straight-forward. I disagree with the people here that say the peices will make you sound better than you are. What you get with this book is peices that bring out the beauty of the *sound* of the guitar. Most people, including us guitarists, are just suckers for the open ringing you get so easily with a (decent) guitar and that is what these peices exploit. If you play these peices you will not sound like a pro (at least not to a musician, maybe to your grandma). You will, on the other hand, sound....lovely. So, I recommend this book one hundred percent to a beginner who can play a few chords competently and wants to get into fingerstyle. But if you can play with you fingers a little already, look around for a slightly more advanced book.
Rating:
Summary: Fingerpicker
Review: This book is excellent. I found it by chance and decided to give it a shot. Whether your just learning fingerpicking, or youve been playing for a while, there are lessons to challenge any player in this book. Ive played guitar for 12 years, fingerpicking, but not TRAVIS picking. I first heard Travis picking in Dust in the Wind by Kansas. This book will teach you how to play like Lyndsey Buckingham in no time. the lessons in the beggining are easy and prepare you for the beautiful songs that you can learn in the end. People hear me play the songs from this book and think Im amazing. (secretly, it took me 2 weeks to master this book, practicing for 30-60 minutes a night) If you want to learn to play classical guitar, then get this book, steal it, buy it, borrow it from a friend, just get it!
Rating:
Summary: great begginner book!
Review: This book is excellent. I found it by chance and decided to give it a shot. Whether your just learning fingerpicking, or youve been playing for a while, there are lessons to challenge any player in this book. Ive played guitar for 12 years, fingerpicking, but not TRAVIS picking. I first heard Travis picking in Dust in the Wind by Kansas. This book will teach you how to play like Lyndsey Buckingham in no time. the lessons in the beggining are easy and prepare you for the beautiful songs that you can learn in the end. People hear me play the songs from this book and think Im amazing. (secretly, it took me 2 weeks to master this book, practicing for 30-60 minutes a night) If you want to learn to play classical guitar, then get this book, steal it, buy it, borrow it from a friend, just get it!
Rating:
Summary: Fingerpicker
Review: This book is superb. Hmm. Wait: it's flawless. I had heard that Hanson was a great teacher. Now I see why. I've been playing about four years, I have a certain amount of ability, and I was able to start picking things up from this book right away. I was playing the first song in an hour or so. It uses all kinds of complex-sounding chords (Amin6, Dmin6, etc.), but Hanson ingeniuously uses very simple-to-play chords. As in, most of them require only one or two fingers! I recently recorded myself playing one of the book's first songs and posted it to a message board of guitarists. Several people commented that it sounded "really complicated." Little do they know how easy it is to play! (They wanted me to post tabs--I gave them a link to come here and buy the book.) The book's songs start at the fairly easy level, but by the end of the book, the material is extremely challenging. (Some high-speed ragtime.) If you're brand-new to the guitar, you'll struggle even with the first songs--but they would be learnable even by a novice. It will be a mighty struggle for me to learn the later songs in the book. If you have any level of fingerpicking experience at all, you will jump into this book like a fish into a river. You will find excellent material to build your chops. The book contains very little in the way of theory, but those two-finger chords I was telling you about are a great way for an advancing guitarist like me to sit and think about chords and the notes that go into them, and how to build them all over the neck. So you don't really get any theory about this book, but with a little dedication on your part, you can use it as a sort of launching platform. That's what I'm doing. ... It has vaulted straight into the "top 5 most valuable books" category for me--and I've bought a lot of guitar books. ...
Rating:
Summary: Simple but deadly!
Review: This is the fourth book I have purchased by Mark Hanson. I also have the Travis Fingerpicking, Solo Fingerpicking, and Christmas Noel. This book gets into basic information real fast and will have you playing some "REAL GOOD STUFF" fast. I was able to play the first song in about an hour. The book has many difficult appearing chord names--BUT--most of the chords are two fingered and can be moved up an down the neck to make for some really great accompaniment. You will be playing all over the guitar--and sounding like a pro real fast. The book gets into more complicated material towards the end--but this book is not as complicated as the earlier mentioned books--so I would recommend this one first.
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